It's rare that a product will get journalists from different publications all calling each other—and by rare I mean never. But that's what happened with Samsung's BD-P1000. There have been calls back and forth between different magazines, then different manufacturers. Even content providers have been keeping the phone lines busy for the past few weeks. At first, it was to see if everyone was seeing the same things, stemming from disbelief. Then, it was thoughts on what was going on. Next, it was trying to find answers. And it all started with this little DVD, er, Blu-ray player. (See my full review on page 126.)

With more than a little excitement, I hooked up the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc player. Here it is, the first Blu-ray player to hit the world. I put it right on top of the Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD player, which I'm sure the Blu-ray people would love to hear, and the HD DVD people not so much. I ran the HDMI cable to the virtually reference-quality Yamaha DPX-1300 projector, put in my old standby The Fifth Element (of course), and sat back, ready to enjoy. The disc started up promptly (take that, Toshiba!), and, within seconds, there was Blu-ray. It only took a few seconds more before I uttered something along the lines of, "What the hell?"